1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computerized workflow management and, more particularly, to a workflow management system and method that morphs work items.
2. Discussion of Related Art
xe2x80x9cWorkflowxe2x80x9d is the automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information, or tasks are passed from one xe2x80x9cactivityxe2x80x9d to another according to a defined xe2x80x9cbusiness process.xe2x80x9d A xe2x80x9cbusiness processxe2x80x9d is a defined set or sequence of procedures or activities that collectively realize a business objective or policy goal. An xe2x80x9cactivityxe2x80x9d is a description of a piece of work that forms one logical step within a business process or workflow performed by an xe2x80x9cactor.xe2x80x9d An activity may involve human resources (i.e., a xe2x80x9cparticipantxe2x80x9d) to support the execution of the activity, or it may involve automatic execution via a software xe2x80x9cagent.xe2x80x9d The xe2x80x9cwork itemxe2x80x9d represents the life cycle, or state, of a body of work as it passes through a workflow. A xe2x80x9cworkflow management systemxe2x80x9d provides procedural automation of a business process by managing the sequence of work activity and by invoking the appropriate human and/or computer resources associated with the various activity steps involved in the defined business process.
Over the years, many workflow management products have been introduced often particularly focusing on functional needs of a specific business processes. These systems are largely incompatible with other workflow systems, thus making it extremely difficult and costly for one workflow management system, for example, to interoperate with another workflow management system. This is undesirable because often the systems that cannot interoperate are considered related in a business sense.
To address the above, the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) was established with a stated purpose of developing specifications to facilitate interoperability between heterogeneous workflow products and to improve integration of workflow applications with other information technology (IT) services, such as electronic mail and document management. To this end, the WfMC developed and published a workflow reference model which, among other things, outlines a generic workflow model and various interfaces. See DAVIDHOLLINGSWORTH, WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT COALITION, THE WORKFLOW REFERENCE MODEL, Document No. TC00-1003, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. The Coalition has further provided a specification of terminology and of the various interfaces. See, respectively, WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT COALITION, TERMINOLOGY AND GLOSSARY, Document No. WfMC-TC-1011, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, and WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT COALITION, WORKFLOW CLIENT APPLICATION (INTERFACE 2) APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE (WAPI) SPECIFICATION, Document Number WfMC-TC-1009, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. The various standards and specifications are silent on implementation details of any of the various components and primarily focus on interfaces. Moreover, to the extent that interfaces are discussed with any specificity beyond an abstract model, they are discussed with reference to the xe2x80x98Cxe2x80x99 programming language.
In conventional workflow management systems, a work item is a representation of a document or information being passed through a business process. Although the contents of that document may change along its transition from activity to activity, the xe2x80x9ctypexe2x80x9d of the item remains unchanged. For example, if a word processing document is being routed through a workflow, each participant or agent receives a copy of the word processing document. In short, conventional systems are document- or form-centric.
For example, Lotus Notes, available from IBM, is a collaborative mail-based system in which specific documents arc passed through a proprietary interface and modified by an end-user and then passed to a next end-user. The same document is in use at all times. InConcert, available from InConcert, is an object-based system having a proprietary messaging protocol in which each action is associated with a single, specific display type. To transform information from one display to another requires manual intervention. Metro, available from Action Technologies, is a document and forms passing system in which the forms may be displayed in a browser.
The conventional systems require that each entity involved in a given workflow must understand and be able to process the data type that is being used by all other entities. This places restrictions on the types of entities that may be incorporated into a workflow. If another data type is needed a separate workflow must be initiated. This is not only inefficient but introduces its own inherent interoperability concerns.
Thus, it is an object of the invention to provide a workflow management system and method that overcomes the above disadvantages. It is another object of the invention to provide a workflow management system and method that morphs work items into a type or form needed by a given actor.
Preferred embodiments of the invention provide a workflow management system that improves interoperability by allowing activity applications, i.e., either an application to interact with a participant or an agent, to be developed without regard to the actual work item contents. The system detects the work item contents data that is needed by an activity and morphs a work item that has been routed to that activity into a form having only the data that is needed by the activity. The work item may be dynamically modified not only to change variable values in the work item contents but to include new components in the contents. Certain embodiments associate activity-dependent HTML pages with an activity so that the eventual display of a morphed work item may appear as completely different forms or documents from one activity to the next.
Under a preferred embodiment, a workflow system distributes work items to actors so that the actors may perform an activity within a defined workflow process. The system includes a server and morphing logic. The server interprets the workflow process and facilitates the scheduling and routing of work items in the system. Each work item has a set of work item contents data. The morphing logic determines which data is needed by an actor to which a work item has been scheduled and morphs a work item so that the actor receives only the data from the work item contents that the actor needs.